On that hot August evening in 2003, her TV dinner was found on the kitchen table, cooked, butbarely touched.

At first glance, nothing appeared out of place in her small gray home at 209 East Elm St.

The 85-year-old was found in bed wearing a white silk slip, her pistol a few feet away in a box.

Her eyes were closed. Arms slightly akimbo.

She nearly looked peaceful.

Clay-Barnette Funeral Home Director Eric Bester told police it was just like any other home death he had seen.

At first.

But a cut phone line, bruises on Lottie's face, an unlocked door and a butcher knife found on her bedroom chair raised suspicions.

When two deaths followed within three months, linked by eerily similar details, coincidence seemed too weak a word.

A life with hardship

Nearly 10 years have passed since that summer.

Lottie Ledford's life and death have been broken down to a few hundred pages in a black police binder.

A sweet-faced woman with a halo of white curls, snippets of her life paint a childhood marked by hardship and harder work.

Her mother died young. Her father spent time in a Tennessee prison.

At most, she had a fourth-grade education.

Like many Shelby residents, she went to work in the Shelby mills at a young age and retired after years of sewing.

Her skills turned into a hobby and neighbors said she made all of her own clothes.

Lottie Ledford never married and lived alone. Her closest blood relative was her nephew, Bobby Fisher.

Disconnection, discovery

On Aug. 23, 2003, Lottie talked on the phone with her niece, Becky Fisher, and complained of not feeling well.

It was around noon.

That evening, Becky tried to call again but repeated attempts only offered a busy signal.

She became alarmed and took a cab the short trip from her Grice Street home to East Elm Street and, according to the original 911 call, found the door slightly ajar.

In the emergency call, made from the Andersons' house across the street, Fisher said she was afraid that an intruder had broken into her aunt's home and was still inside.

Carl and Myrtle Anderson were close friends with Lottie and had known her for about 50 years.

They took her grocery shopping and helped her run errands.

After Fisher arrived, Carl Anderson went next door to investigate and found an unlocked door.

It was 9 p.m. and all the lights were off, so he turned on a living room light, the police report recorded.

When he shone his flashlight into Lottie’s bedroom he saw her body lying on the bed, dressed in a nightgown.

The case might have quietly faded away, and Lottie Ledford's name with it, if not for a funeral home director and a tenacious Bobby Fisher, Ledford's nephew.

'It was not natural'

Bester, co-owner of Clay-Barnette Funeral Home said, even after dealing with hundreds of deaths and seeing countless bodies, he vividly remembers Lottie's case.

She was nearly buried without a second thought.

The night of her death, he was called out to the home to pick up the body.

He took a passing glance at a scratch on her left cheek but didn't notice anything out of the ordinary.

It wasn't until her body was prepared for burial and she was embalmed that the bruises became more pronounced.

"It literally looked like someone pinched her nose and held her mouth shut," Bester said. "It looked like she might have put a hand up and scratched her cheek."

She also had black bruising on her underarms.

"I attributed that to someone pinning her down with their knees," he said.

When Bobby Fisher saw the bruises, the two called in Cleveland County Coroner Dwight Tessneer to take a look.

"We were in agreement and sent her to Charlotte (for an autopsy)," Bester said.

Despite the battered face and bruises on her arms, the results determined Lottie Ledford died of natural causes.

She was on heart medication and was scheduled for colon surgery in upcoming months.

Police said, with no apparent signs of foul play and autopsy results that pointed toward a fatal heart condition, the case was closed.

But autopsy results couldn't explain why police found the phone lines freshly cut, or why a 12-inch butcher knife was found in her bedroom. Or why the usually cautious woman would have gone to bed with the door unlocked.

Two officers disagreed on whether the back door had been tampered with.

Police also found a slit in the back door screen, just above the door handle, that had been made a few weeks earlier.

Although the knife was tested for finger prints, no other clues were forthcoming.

Bobby Fisher, who has since died, was convinced his aunt had been murdered.

Bester agreed.

"I always felt that someone got away with it," Bester said. "It was not natural. You don't have those markings on your face. At her age, if someone held her down and she was struggling, the heart valve will pop."

'I was afraid. We all was afraid.'

The Elm Street death shook the neighborhood

A few houses over, on Washington Street, an elderly neighbor answers the door with one hand clutched to her life alert.

She still remembers Ledford's death 10 years earlier and doesn't want her name revealed.

She said she and other neighbors talked about it amongst themselves after it happened.

They all had suspicions the death wasn't natural.

"We kind of thought, seems like someone come in and killed her," the woman said. "I was afraid. We all was afraid."

That fear deepened when, the very next month, another death shook a Shelby neighborhood.

Next: Lillian Mullinax's body is discovered in her Chestnut Street home